2006-07-12

Tech-No-Logy

I am not into technology at all.MySpace, UTube, and Call Waiting really bother me.I haven't seen enough, or read enough science fiction to be influenced by fears of The Bad Robots but I can tell you that technology is fucking with my life.

Everyday.

Technology is responsible for there being less employees in the world. This means that it's normal to leave work half an hour or an hour after your official quittin' time. I have talked to tons of people who feel weird when they actually scoot out of work on time. It's like they're going to get a black checkmark because they had the audacity to only work eight hours.

Technology is also responsible for an enormous amount of wasted time. We waste time wading through elaborate phone trees, shouting voice responses into my telephone receiver, and calling people back when one or the other cell phone loses its signal. You know what the very best connection of all-time is?A land line to land line call that you make and the person on the other end goes, "Hello?Oh my gosh! How are you! What a nice surprise!"You hardly ever get that unless you are calling your grandparents.

Thanks to the advent of caller id, you get, "Hey."There's no anticipation of talking to someone on the phone. There's no excitement in the other person's voice anymore. There's no hanging up on each other because there's no answer anymore.This saddens me to no end.

I loathe the phone lately and am actually trying to not use it at home for a bit.I don't have a land line right now and while it has been a nice financial situation, and my heart actually longs to hear the full voices and uncluttered conversations of a land line, so few people have them that getting one would not really help me at all since I would still have to deal with my call being dropped or with the total lack of surprise that I am calling.

I used to love talking on the phone but now? It's lost it's charm, big-time.

Things like MySpace and UTube bother me a lot, too. I feel like if everyone wasn't so paranoid with their caller id, if everyone wasn't so paranoid about their reality then there wouldn't be such a huge interest in a virtual reality.

Who the hell do I need to talk to in an alternate reality? When I throw myself into this reality, there's a lot going on that the virtual idiots are missing.

Like the "Who's calling me?" thrill that you used to have not when the phone vibrates for the first time, but all the way through when you hear the voice at the other end of the line say, "Sarah, it's Chelsea!"What a wonderful way to start a phone call, you know?And when someone was calling and you didn't want to talk to that person, you would pick up the phone: "Hello?""Sarah. It's (fill in the blank on guys I've dated and/or slept with)."Click. Or not.At least everyone had a fighting chance to be heard. Even if you got hung up on, you at least called and got hung up on. You know for sure that the person does not want to talk to you.

Anymore, you call and the person doesn't answer when they see your name on the caller id. You can assume that they don't have service, that they are busy and haven't called you back, or that they never want to speak to you again. The options, while sort of infinite, are also indefinite and that's not really fair.

No wonder people are confused about communicating with each other 9 times out of 10. It's also no wonder that "mixed signals" hardly ever applies anymore.You can't know what signals to mix when there are so many of them to filter through every day.

So you're thinking that I'm a blogger and a hypocrite?You're right on that count. Without technology, I would not have readers and I would not have this outlet.

I would have another outlet, though.

Without technology, I would work less hours and get more done. Everyone would. We wouldn't sit through lunch at our desks to order that book off Amazon or check our eBay bids really quick before running into that meeting. We wouldn't have things flying at us and people expecting INSTANT resolution because they have FINALLY gotten a hold of a person. We wouldn't have to worry so much about who's reading, who's calling, or how MySpace went down right in the middle of updating.

I'm just tired of it.I don't like technology at all.I think about this all the time and I think you should think about it, too. Does it really make your life easier? For reals - stop for a second before you answer that.